Over the long Labor Day weekend, The Butler rallied to a first place finish for the third week in a row, amassing $20 million over 4 days for a $79 million total. It's holding up very strong and will cross $100 million over the next two weeks, boosting its Oscar hopes as the fall season arrives. Over the 3 day weekend, the concert documentary One Direction: This is Us had topped, with $15.8 million, although the film was extremely frontloaded, meaning most of that money came from Thursday shows alone. It'll probably finish with about $30-33 million, more than the recent Katy Perry and Jonas Brothers documentaries, but not nearly as high as say, Michael Jackson's This is It ($72 million) or Justin Bieber: Never Say Never ($73 million). The biggest concert documentary ever remains Woodstock, from 1970, with $50 million, which of course, adjusted for inflation would be about $290 million today.
In other new releases, Getaway, one of the worst reviewed films of all time, crashed and burned, with just $5 million over the weekend, and the limited release Spanish comedy Instructions Not Included earned an amazing $10 million on just 347 screens, showing that there is a significant Hispanic audience out there for films targeting them.
Top 5:
- Lee Daniels' The Butler- $20 million
- One Direction: This is Us- $18 million
- We're the Millers- $15.9 million
- Planes- $10.7 million
- Instructions Not Included- $10 million
In holdovers, We're the Millers has now made $112 million and is one of the major hits of the summer, and Pacific Rim finally crossed $100 million in the U.S. while reaching $400 million worldwide, so the movie can definitively be labeled a success thanks to overseas grosses. Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine has $21 million total and still going strong, while Disney's Planes has $70 million domestic, which is now considered a hit for the made-for-DVD film, as it's holding on well due to a lack of family audience competition. Next week, we're officially out of summer blockbuster season, as the only major releases are Riddick, with Vin Diesel and the much anticipated documentary Salinger, from Shane Salerno, that will reveal several soon to be published new works from the famed author.
